PARAMUS, N.J. — As Rory McIlroy passed through a phalanx of autograph seekers on his way to the 18th tee during pro-am play Wednesday morning at Ridgewood Country Club here, a woman’s voice rang out.

“Loved you on Fallon the other night, Rory!” she said.

If McIlroy, the 25-year-old superstar, was not yet convinced that his crossover into the mainstream celebrity realm was complete, his recent appearance on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” — and recognition for it on the golf course — may have done the trick.

Now McIlroy comes soaring into metropolitan New York, and in between a promotional event for Nike, a jog through Central Park and the late-night appearance with Fallon, McIlroy hopes to continue his torrid stretch of golf.

McIlroy, who is No. 1 in the world rankings, has won the two most recent major tournaments, the British Open and the P.G.A. Championship, and with Tiger Woods out of the picture, McIlroy is likely to command center stage this week at the Barclays, the first of four postseason tournaments to determine the winner of the FedEx Cup and its $10 million prize.

There were plenty of hints of that status during Wednesday’s pro-am. McIlroy easily attracted the largest gallery as he finished up his morning round, even with Phil Mickelson — always a fan favorite in New Jersey — playing directly behind.

Mickelson could not resist drawing laughs as he watched McIlroy tee off on 18. He playfully referred to the unusual finish to the P.G.A. Championship two weeks ago, when McIlroy’s group moved up to join Mickelson’s on the final hole to ensure the completion of the tournament before dark.

“Hey, Rory,” Mickelson said. “You mind if we hit up?”

On Monday, NBC’s Fallon fueled the debate about McIlroy as successor to Woods by having both in the studio for an interview and a chipping contest. Woods, who will miss the rest of the year to mend his injured back, played a self-deprecating comedic foil while McIlroy was asked about his success.

“This little run that I’m on makes me appreciate what he’s done,” McIlroy said. He has won four majors to Woods’s 14.

On Wednesday, McIlroy expanded on the notion of his role as heir apparent to Woods’s golf throne.

“I’m just going to keep playing my golf and play as good as I can,” McIlroy said. “But I don’t think any torch has been passed. I never think of myself in that way.”

He added of Woods, “I know he’s working his butt off to get back here and get back to where he wants to be.”

McIlroy acknowledged that there was a difference in how the world had treated him since these last two major victories compared with the stretch after his first two, which he earned over a span of about 13 months, rather than three weeks.

Suddenly, it seems, McIlroy has risen from a promising young contender to the PGA Tour’s new face, with Nike commercials and tour-sponsored Facebook chats. When he posted a video on Twitter of himself taking the “Ice Bucket Challenge” to raise awareness for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, it was reposted more than 2,300 times. He nominated former President George W. Bush to complete the challenge. Bush accepted, posting a video a day later.

“My life has changed a little bit,” McIlroy said. “But it’s great. I’m in a great position, and I’m trying to embrace it as much as I can.”

Mickelson said it was premature to compare McIlroy’s string of success to Woods’s peak performance in 2000, but he did not hide his admiration for McIlroy.

“It’s an incredible run,” Mickelson said. “You can probably go back and compare it to some of the Tiger stuff. He’s done it over decades. And I wouldn’t be surprised if Rory did it, too.”

A year ago, Adam Scott won the Barclays and moved to No. 2 in the rankings, and he is back there after an 11-week stint at No. 1. But he acknowledged the gap between McIlroy and the rest of the pack.

“I need to lift my game quickly and get a win here or in the next few weeks,” Scott said, “show a guy like Rory, who is kind of stretching away from the rest of us, that someone is going to go with him.”

That someone could be another 25-year-old, Rickie Fowler, who has played well enough without winning to begin to resemble the Mickelson of a decade ago, in what was then a budding rivalry with Woods. Fowler mentioned some other young players, like Jordan Spieth and Patrick Reed, as potential challengers to McIlroy.

“I definitely have some work to do,” Fowler said, adding, “Rory is kind of out on his own right now.”

With his length and accuracy off the tee, McIlroy would appear to be nicely positioned for Ridgewood, which features thick rough and small greens. He said the course seemed to be playing shorter than when the tournament was last held there, four years ago. But so much else has changed just in the last four weeks.

“I see myself as a golfer on the PGA Tour that wants to be the best he can be,” McIlroy said. “I don’t see the need to carry any sort of torch. I just want to win golf tournaments.”

Explaining the College Football Playoff is not the same as explaining the systems determining the annual winners of other sports. It’s much funkier.

For much of the history of a sport that began in 1869 in New Brunswick, N.J., as a professor supposedly hollered at the proceedings, “This will come to no Christian end,” there could be multiple champions per year. Different services chose different champions and in 1927, to name one year, six schools claimed national titles.

Well after that, a system of two polls picked champions, sometimes two different champions. Peak absurdity came in 1978, when one poll declared Southern California the winner while the other named Alabama, even though Southern California had manhandled Alabama in Alabama that year. All the confusion finally gave way to a Bowl Championship Series from 1998-2013, in which a phalanx of humans and computers would choose two teams to play in one championship game.

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Eventually, or very eventually, that gave way to the current system, the College Football Playoff.

It works complicatedly, as with the rest of the 151-year history of college football. A 13-member committee meets five or six or seven times per autumn in a gaudy hotel near the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. That committee studies the weekend gone by and issues top-25 rankings for five straight Tuesday nights, usually through late October, all of November and early December, then a final ranking on a Sunday midday in early December. The top four teams from that final ranking reach the College Football Playoff. This pandemic year, five meetings run from Nov. 24 through Dec. 20, a late start and finish. The first rankings will be announced at 7 p.m. Tuesday on ESPN.

It began in the imagination in late 2011, once the country finally wearied of merely 142 years of unsatisfying procedures for determining national champions. From late 2011 through 2012 and into 2013 in meeting rooms in various cities, sober administrators who manage a non-sober sport came to gradual and then vast layers of agreement. The actual football part of it began with the 2014-15 season and on Jan. 1, 2015, when the first national semifinals pitted No. 1 seed Alabama against No. 4 seed Ohio State in the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans and No. 2 seed Oregon against No. 3 seed Florida State in the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif.

Generally, it’s a group of model citizens, plus coaches and athletic directors. With the coaches always former and the athletic directors always current, those two groups comprise the majority of the committee. Committee members rotate in and out; by now, 27 people have served and flown to Texas often, including former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (2014-16) and former U.S. Army Chief of Staff Ray Odierno (2017-present), whose presences on such a committee after their previous pursuits constitute either precipitous decline or significant upgrade, depending on one’s perspective. Recent years have brought college football all-Americans and NFL veterans who refrained from going into coaching: Ronnie Lott (2019-present) and John Urschel (2020).

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At present, there are seven athletic directors (Iowa’s Gary Barta, Oklahoma’s Joe Castiglione, Wyoming’s Tom Burman, Colorado’s Rick George, Arkansas State’s Terry Mohajir, Georgia Tech’s Todd Stansbury and Florida’s Scott Stricklin), two retired former head coaches (Ken Hatfield and R.C. Slocum), Odierno, Lott, Urschel and Paola Boivin, a longtime Phoenix sports columnist turned Arizona State professor. In the sportswriter vein, Boivin has followed upon the former USA Today scribe Steve Wieberg (2014-17).

Painstakingly. The committee reviews the weekly avalanche of games and statistics and strengths of schedules in a sport with 130 teams, most of which play in separate conference fiefdoms, with most of same believing themselves to be the center of the known universe. The committee holds discussions in which anyone affiliated with a university being discussed must leave the room and hopefully go to the bar. In its first six years and incarnations, it has shown an impression with teams who dare to play those scheduling rarities: nonconference games against stout opponents. It also has shown a knack long missing during the first century-plus, including those long eras when polls determined champions and often disagreed on same: If Team A is ranked ahead of Team B and both win, it will rearrange the order if Team B played a strong opponent and based on “body of work,” rather than just maintaining the A-B order based on continued wins.

For this pandemic season, it’s slightly diminished and possibly uncertain. The bowls, 40 last year, number 37, and begin on Dec. 19 with the Tropical Smoothie Cafe Frisco Bowl near Dallas, which does sound refreshing. But the semifinals and final of the College Football Playoff remain just as on the long-planned schedule: the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans and Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif., on Jan. 1 for the semifinals, and the national championship game on Jan. 11 in Miami for the final. The semifinal venues rotate among six bowls year to year. The committee also uses rankings to decide participants in the other four big-big-bucks bowls, which this year are the Cotton Bowl in Arlington, Texas, on Dec. 30, the Peach Bowl in Atlanta on Jan. 1, the Fiesta Bowl near Phoenix on Jan. 2, and the Orange Bowl in Miami on Jan. 2.

That question percolates in national discussion in this era even at times when the moon is not full. Long ago around 2012, conference commissioners studied a range of possibilities and decided upon four. The second layer of college football, the Football Championship Series (FCS), plays a tournament each year with 24 teams. But at the top tier, four is an increase from the two of the Bowl Championship Series, which created much angst in those years when three teams went unbeaten or had the same leading record. Bringing it to four has caused annual sullenness at the ranking of No. 5, and has fomented chatter on when it might go to eight, at which point No. 9 will wind up glum, or 16, at which point No. 17 …

No. Of the 24 teams chosen in the six-year history thus far, three did not win conferences. The committee of 2016 chose Ohio State (11-1) and omitted Penn State (11-2) even though Penn State won the Big Ten and defeated Ohio State during the season, because Ohio State had the better record and better wins (including at Oklahoma). The committee of 2017 chose the SEC nonwinner Alabama (11-1) while also choosing the SEC winner (Georgia, at 12-1). The committee of 2018 chose Notre Dame (12-0) even though it did not win a conference on the technicality that it does not play in one except in the circumstance of a catastrophic pandemic.

Yes. It has happened just once, and it wreaked a measure of the nationwide resentment that makes the sport such an irresistible delight. Not only did Georgia (12-1) and Alabama (11-1) both make the playoff in 2017, but each won semifinals and advanced to the national championship game, a regional occasion of long-standing mutual contempt held fittingly in Atlanta, with Alabama winning 26-23 in overtime.

People held meetings. In 2012 alone, commissioners and the sport’s leaders went to meetings in New Orleans, Dallas, South Florida, Chicago, Washington and Denver. They reviewed a range of possibilities until hatching the current system. There’s much agreement, though, that the playoff push got a big shove from the championship game of early 2012, when the old system cranked out an Alabama-LSU rematch so boring it threatened to leave the nation dangerously comatose.

Not very many. The 24 slots thus far have gone to only 11 programs, a paucity less than reflective of the sport’s coast-to-coast vividness. Four programs have hoarded 17 of the berths: five each for Alabama and Clemson, four for Oklahoma and three for Ohio State, lending those four a visibility that has helped lure the recruits who then help hoard further appearances and visibility. Otherwise, the table scraps of a single appearance have gone to seven different programs: Oregon, Florida State, Michigan State, Washington, Georgia, Notre Dame, and LSU. Those seven have gone 3-4 in their semifinals, with the wins going to Oregon, Georgia and LSU. Those three semifinal winners have gone 1-2 in championship games, with that win coming last January and going to LSU.

MIDDLETOWN, NJ — Lincroft residents were positive the high winds and tree damage they witnessed was a tornado Wednesday morning.

And, after the National Weather Service (NWS) investigated, it turns out they were correct.

It was an actual tornado that first touched down on the Brookdale campus baseball diamond just before 10 a.m. Wednesday and then continued on a 1.2-mile path of destruction down Phalanx Road and over Swimming River Reservoir.

The National Weather Service investigated, reviewed damage photos and videos (some of which was submitted by Patch) and on Thursday, made the official declaration: It was indeed a twister. The tornado had maximum wind speeds of 80 miles per hour, a path of 70 yards and a path length of 1.2 miles. It touched down for a mere two minutes, from 9:57 a.m. to 9:59 a.m.

Residents in the area insisted what they had just experienced was a tornado, as 70-foot-tall trees were slammed into homes, into pools and brought down fences and power lines. Nobody was injured.

Find out what's happening in Middletownwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

"It was crazy," one Lincroft resident told Patch. "Trees were tossed in people's swimming pools, fences torn up. It looks like a war zone."

"When we got to the basement, you heard everything just stop, it just went quiet," said Greengrove Court Ben Harris told the Asbury Park Press. "I think it was a tornado because I never heard anything go silent like that. Came back out and obviously you can see what happened."

The NWS had just put the entire area under a tornado warning Wednesday morning, just minutes before the twister struck, even texting residents to get into their basements immediately.

"It just got really dark, windy and started raining pretty hard," said Marguerite Portagallo, a Lincroft resident who lives near the Christian Brothers Academy campus. "I then went to the basement because we got an alert on the phone to take shelter."

The Middletown Fire Dept. provided this photo of a home on Greengrove Court. Photo by Laurie Kegley, MTFD Public Information Officer Photographer

The official tornado confirmation did not come as a surprise to Middletown volunteer firefighters who responded to the damage Wednesday.

"It does fit in with what I saw. It had a narrow path. The neighbor at the top of Greengrove Court did not have one leaf out of place," said Middletown volunteer firefighter Dennis Fowler.

Fowler, 63, said he's lived in Middletown his entire life and never heard of a tornado hitting the area.

"Never to my memory," he said, adding he was going to ask some longtime Middletown residents in their '90s if they've ever heard of a tornado here before.

"A tornado touched down on a baseball field on the campus of Brookdale Community College in the Lincroft section of Middletown. It tossed a set of metal bleachers to the field, then crossed over Phalanx Road into a residential area, with numerous trees sustaining damage on and around Hickory Lane," read the National Weather Service's report. "The tornado continued a little south and passed near the northeast corner of Swimming River Reservoir, causing additional tree damage. It then entered another residential area near Swimming River Road and Normandy Road, producing a continued path of damaged trees."

The tornado ran out of steam as it entered Riverdale West Park, said the National Weather Service.

Initial Patch report: Trees Strike Middletown Homes After Tornado Warning In Monmouth

From the National Weather Service: (you can read their statement here: https://nwschat.weather.gov/p.php?pid=202008201508-KPHI-NOUS41-PNSPHI)

...SUMMARY...A TORNADO TOUCHED DOWN ON A BASEBALL FIELD ON THE CAMPUS OF BROOKDALE COMMUNITY COLLEGE IN THE LINCROFT SECTION OF MIDDLETOWN TOWNSHIP IN MONMOUTH COUNTY, NEW JERSEY. IT TOSSED A SET OF METAL BLEACHERS ADJACENT TO THE FIELD, THEN CROSSED OVER PHALANX ROAD INTO A RESIDENTIAL AREA, WITH NUMEROUS TREES SUSTAINING DAMAGE ON AND AROUND HICKORY LANE. TREE DAMAGE MAINLY CONSISTED OF BROKEN LIMBS AND THE SNAPPING OF SOME TREES NEAR THEIR TOPS. AT LEAST ONE TREE WAS ALSO UPROOTED IN THIS AREA.

THE TORNADO CONTINUED A LITTLE SOUTH OF DUE EAST AND PASSED NEAR THE NORTHEAST CORNER OF THE SWIMMING RIVER RESERVOIR, CAUSING ADDITIONAL TREE DAMAGE. THE TORNADO THEN ENTERED ANOTHER RESIDENTIAL AREA NEAR SWIMMING RIVER ROAD AND NORMANDY ROAD, PRODUCING A CONTINUED PATH OF DAMAGED TREES.

THE TORNADO LIFTED AS IT ENTERED THE RIVERDALE WEST PARK, WHERE TREE DAMAGE WAS NO LONGER OBSERVED. THE TORNADO DID NOT APPEAR TO CAUSE ANY DIRECT STRUCTURAL DAMAGE, THOUGH A COUPLE OF HOMES SUSTAINED DAMAGE FROM FALLING TREE DEBRIS. THE DEGREE OF DAMAGE IS CONSISTENT WITH AN EF0 TORNADO WITH ESTIMATED MAXIMUM WINDS OF 80 MPH AND A CONTINUOUS, RELATIVELY NARROW PATH OF AROUND 70 YARDS IN WIDTH. THANKFULLY, NO INJURIES OCCURRED AS A RESULT OF THIS TORNADO.

Wind speeds of 65 to 86 mph are considered the weakest kind of tornado, according to the enhanced Fujita scale, which classifies tornadoes as the following:

EF0...WEAK......65 TO 85 MPHEF1...WEAK......86 TO 110 MPHEF2...STRONG....111 TO 135 MPHEF3...STRONG....136 TO 165 MPHEF4...VIOLENT...166 TO 200 MPHEF5...VIOLENT...>200 MPH

Click here to get Patch email notifications on this or other local news articles or get Patch breaking news alerts sent right to your phone with our app. Download here. Follow Middletown Patch on Facebook. Have a news tip? Email the Middletown Patch reporter, Carly.baldwin@patch.com

CAMDEN, NJ — Mayor Victor Carstarphen says he’s just fulfilling a pledge to the many people who pepper him routinely with one pressing question: “When are you going to fix my street?”

On Tuesday morning, Carstarphen will give them his official answer: Soon.

A phalanx of city and county officials plan to join Carstarphen in the Liberty Park section as he announces an ambitious $3 million proposal to mill and resurface 45 bumpy city streets before winter.

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"I’ve heard from many residents about the conditions of their streets. I have made infrastructure improvements one of my top priorities," the mayor told TAPinto Camden on Monday.

Under an emergency program, Camden resurfaced 13 roads in 2021. This year, so far, it completed work on 11 streets, with six more underway. “We are just delivering on our promise,” said Carstarphen.

“These (street) investments will be made citywide, in every neighborhood,” Carstarphen said. “We are talking about streets that have not been repaired for more than 50 years. Trucks are out now, milling and paving at a pace not seen in decades.”

The mayor’s formal announcement comes Tuesday at Liberty Park’s Sheridan and 10th streets, where he will be joined by county Commissioner Al Dyer, city council members, public works crews and supervisors, and some neighborhood residents.

“We have not seen this level of investment, maintenance and revitalization of public infrastructure in the last 60 years,” said Commissioner Dyer, liaison to the county Department of Public Works.

“I cannot stress the importance of this work for the city and the county,” said Dyer, noting that Camden residents and visitors have dealt with “crumbling infrastructure for 60 years, but now there’s a multi-phase plan to deliver new streets, curbs and sidewalks.”

City officials – working with the county – have created short-and long-term comprehensive plans to resurface a host of Camden streets. In some cases, this is to be done after underground utilities and other infrastructure upgrades are also complete. The work, in many cases, will also include new curbs and sidewalks.

People with questions or concerns can contact the Mayor’s Office at (856) 757-7200 or by email at: mayor@ci.camden.nj.us The city Department of Public Works is at (856) 757-7132 or (856) 757-7034, can be emailed at publicworks@ci.camden.nj.us.

The award-winning Monmouth Civic Chorus presents Singing Up a Storm: A Trio of Tempestuous Classics on Sunday, March 12, 2023, at 4 p.m. This exciting program full of vocal and instrumental fireworks includes Handel’s Dixit Dominus, Haydn’s Lord Nelson Mass, and Rosephanye Powell’s The Cry of Jeremiah.

The chorus of 80 voices is joined by professional orchestra composed of some of the country’s most in-demand musicians, and celebrated guest soloists soprano Meg Dudley, mezzo-soprano Kate Maroney, tenor Nickolas Karageorgiou, and bass-baritone Edmund Milly. Artistic Director Dr. Ryan James Brandau conducts.

The performance will take place at The Parish of St. Mary, 1 Phalanx Road, Colts Neck, NJ. Tickets are $40 regular, $35 senior, $30 group (10 or more), $20 student.

All chorus members are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 and engage in serial testing per CDC guidelines before the performance. Audience members are no longer required to show proof of vaccination. Masking is encouraged, but not required. Tickets and information are available at monmouthcivicchorus.org or (732) 933-9333.

Event Summary:

Event title: Singing Up a Storm: A Trio of Tempestuous Classics

Event sponsor: Monmouth Civic Chorus

Date and time: Sunday, March 12, 2023, 4 p.m.

Location: The Parish of St. Mary, 1 Phalanx Road, Colts Neck, NJ

Tickets: $40 regular, $35 senior, $30 group (10 or more), $20 student

About Monmouth Civic Chorus: Monmouth Civic Chorus makes the music that moves you. The Chorus has been called “near-flawless” (Asbury Park Press), “alive and evocative” (The Star-Ledger) and “superior” (Red Bank Green). MCC is the proud recipient of the 2008 ASCAP/Chorus America Alice Parker Award, the 2010 Spinnaker Award for Arts and Culture from the Eastern Monmouth Area Chamber of Commerce, and a third-place winner of the 2018-19 American Prize Ernst Bacon Memorial Award for the Performance of American Music.

About Ryan James Brandau: Artistic Director Ryan James Brandau has broad experience conducting a variety of choral and orchestral ensembles. In addition to his work with Monmouth Civic Chorus, he serves as Artistic Director of Princeton Pro Musica and Amor Artis, a chamber choir and orchestra in New York City. He has also served on the faculty of Westminster Choir College, where he has worked with the Symphonic Choir, which he has prepared for performances with the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Vienna Philharmonic, Berlin Philharmonic, and the New Jersey Symphony. He remains active as a choral arranger, composer, and clinician, whose arrangements and compositions have been featured by choral ensembles across the globe. Ryan received the Doctor of Musical Arts and Master of Music degrees from the Yale School of Music. Prior to pursuing graduate study in conducting, Ryan attended the University of Cambridge in the UK as a Gates Scholar, earning an M.Phil. in historical musicology. He received his B.A. in music, magna cum laude, from Princeton University.

About Meg Dudley: Hailed for her “sparkling voice” (Opera News) and “full-toned soprano” (New York Classical Review), Meg Dudley has established herself as an in-demand soloist and chamber musician throughout the country. Last season, Ms. Dudley was a featured soloist in Vivaldi’s Gloria at Carnegie Hall with Manhattan Concert Productions, in Huang Ruo’s Books of Mountains and Seas at St. Ann’s Warehouse in collaboration with Beth Morrison Projects and Trinity Wall Street, with TENET Vocal Artists in performances with Ensemble Caprice of Charpentier’s Les Plaisirs de Versailles and on tour throughout England and Scotland celebrating the 450th birthday of Tudor composer Thomas Tomkins, at the Berkshire Bach Society in Bach’s BWV 140 and Zelenka’s Magnificat, with St. George Choral Society in Schumann’s Der Rose Pilgerfahrt and Phillip Martin’s Missa Brevis, with the renowned Bach Vespers series at Holy Trinity Church in NYC in Bach’s BWV 22 and Magnificat, and with Grammy award-winning ensembles Conspirare in collaboration with Isaac Cates and Ordained in Austin’s Long Center, and The Crossing in Philadelphia. In summer 2022, Ms. Dudley appeared at Bard Summerscape covering two roles, Isotta and Häushelterin, in Strauss’s comic opera Die Schweigsame Frau.

About Kate Maroney: Recognized by the New York Times for her “vibrant and colorful” singing, mezzo-soprano Kate Maroney is in demand on concert, oratorio and opera stages in works that span from the Renaissance to the 21st century. Kate is a passionate believer in the deeply transformative, fully humanizing power of music and in its ability to foster empathy in the community of performers and listeners alike. She particularly values collaborations with kind and generous colleagues who share this conviction. Kate has appeared in recent seasons as a soloist at Lincoln Center with the American Classical Orchestra and Sacred Music in a Sacred Space (Bach Mass in B-Minor), Carnegie Hall and Chicago’s Orchestra Hall (Handel Dixit Dominus), at LA Opera (Missy Mazzoli Song From the Uproar, Philip Glass and Robert Wilson Einstein On The Beach), Carmel Bach Festival (BWV 97 and 199), with New York Baroque Incorporated (Ambizione in the “new-world” premiere of Bonaventura Aliotti’s Santa Rosalia at Trinity Wall Street), and more.

About Nick Karageorgiou: Tenor Nick Karageorgiou has both established himself as a formidable chamber musician and soloist. Recently located to NY for work at St. Thomas Church on Fifth Ave, he has kept himself busy singing five services a week, spanning a wide range of sacred rep. Additionally, Nick has been heard in many projects under Julian Wachner and the Trinity Wall Street Chorus, most recently a collaboration with LA Opera and Beth Morrison Projects, premiering Ellen Reid’s opera, p r i s m. Other recent engagements of his include concerts with Cantus, Spire Chamber Ensemble, True Concord, The Thirteeen, The Crossing, and The Rose Ensemble.

About Edmund Milly: Bass-Baritone Edmund Milly is sought after for his “perfect diction” (Los Angeles Times), distinctive “delicacy and personal warmth” (Boston Classical Review), and “rich and resonant” (KC Metropolis) sound. Recent solo credits include St. Matthew Passions with the Oregon Bach Festival and the Washington Bach Consort, Carmina Burana with the Baltimore Choral Arts Society, a staged Brahms Requiem with the Thirteen, Five Mystical Songs at the University of South Carolina, and an evening of Broadway standards with the American Pops Orchestra. The 22/23 season will include his first outings with Bach Collegium San Diego, Seraphic Fire, and TENET, as well as Messiah solos with Tempesta di Mare and Ensemble Altera.